Light Out of Shadow
by images-in-words
Summary: (AU) When Tina Cohen-Chang's scientist parents go missing after a strange accident, her friend Santana Lopez' innocent mistake in trying to help her discover the truth of what happened transforms them both into heroes who must save both Tina's mom & dad and the entire town of Lima from forces they can't even begin to understand.


**Light Out of Shadow  
**

 _chapter one_

They say it's better to be lucky than good. I happen to believe it helps to be both, but I certainly can't deny that the best thing that's ever happened to me happened through sheer, dumb luck. It's taken a lot of work to make that gift, that extraordinary gift upon which I stumbled one seemingly ordinary day, become what it is now – but it's true that if not for good fortune and someone else's mistake, I wouldn't be who I am today.

They also say that the best way to deal with tragedy is to give it meaning beyond sadness - to associate it not with anger or despair, but to make it into something positive, somehow bring light out of shadow. This is the improbable but completely true story of what it took for me to do that. The story of how I became something I never imagined I could be, fell in love, and changed the world.

* * *

I still remember everything so vividly, as though it all happened only yesterday. It was a Saturday, a very welcome day off from the pressures of school and social life and every other crisis (real and imagined) going on in my life. I was in the kitchen pouring myself a bowl of cereal for breakfast, preparing to settle down on the couch for the usual morning marathon of cartoons and infomercials, when suddenly the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone – my best friend Rachel rarely missed her Saturday vocal and dance classes – and my mom and dad, both highly respected research scientists at the internationally famous Fabray Labs Corporation, were at work, so it was a mystery to me as to why somebody would be at the door.

Placing the milk back into the refrigerator, I called out, "Just a minute!" before hurrying to answer the door. I put my eye to the keyhole and felt my stomach drop to somewhere around my knees at the sight of my parents' boss, Russell Fabray, flanked by their best friends and co-workers Drs. Hiram and Leroy Berry. Opening the door, I saw the Fabray limousine parked alongside two police cruisers, with two grim-faced officers emerging from each car. Instinctively, I knew that something terrible had happened, and part of me didn't want to know exactly what it was; but another, larger part of me did.

It was that part of me that forced the a stuttered greeting past the constricting tightness in my throat. My vision swam as tears welled up in my eyes, and my hand trembled as I reached for the handle of the screen door that separated me from the five very seriously troubled-looking men on the other side of it.

"M – Mister Fabray, Doctor Berry, Doctor Berry. What – what's going on?"

The corners of Russell Fabray's steel-gray eyes crinkled up as his expression twisted with discomfort. He was not a man accustomed to dealing with young people, even his own daughter Quinn, my classmate and the most beautiful and popular girl at William McKinley High School, and it showed in the tense set of his shoulders, the way his meaty fingers twitched around the large manila envelope he held in his large hands. The Berrys looked only slightly more comfortable, but no less distressed. I could feel the sadness coming off them in waves as they regarded me with a look of deep concern, as though I were a puppy whose favorite chew toy had just been kicked into the sewer. It was a look I'd seen pass between them before, whenever Rachel, their cherished, beloved daughter, would launch into one of her patented rants about Mr. Schuester giving one of her solos in Glee Club to Kurt Hummel or Mercedes Jones.

"I -" he began, then stopped when I opened the screen door and motioned for them all to step inside. "Ms. Cohen-Chang, I don't know how to tell you this, but -"

" _Tina_ ," I said blankly, cutting him off again. Had I been in a more lucid state, I would have recognized this as an unwise thing to do, and had he not been in a situation where kindness and sensitivity were paramount, I'm sure he would have let me know just that. "My name is Tina."

He grunted softly in irritation as he, the Berrys and the two officers followed me into the living room, where he and the two doctors seated themselves on the large couch that dominated the space. I sank slowly, heavily, into my father's beloved recliner. The officers, their faces closed, unreadable, chose to remain standing, folding their hands at their waists, not making a sound. Their bodies were rigid; only their eyes moved, flicking over every inch of the room, assessing points of weakness, points of defense, determining where an attacker might burst into view at any moment. Again, had I been more lucid, I might have been alarmed by this, but my focus was only on the large man seated across from me, whose craggy, weathered visage regarded me as a duty to be discharged, not as the sixteen-year-old girl whose world he was about to blow up completely and utterly.

"Tina," he began again, his voice a low rumble in the oppressive silence. "Shortly after they arrived at the lab, at approximately seven-thirty this morning, there was...an accident. A terrible, terrible accident. We...we don't know exactly what happened, not just yet, but..." His voice trailed off, and his flinty eyes clouded over for a second, as though he was looking at something far off in the distance. "Your parents are two of the finest scientists I've ever known. I have no doubt that they took every possible precaution, followed every single safety protocol, and yet, somehow, something went wrong."

My stomach flipped, and I choked back the scream that threatened to erupt through the hastily erected barriers my mind had placed against my emotions. Something in me demanded that I keep relatively calm, some part of my brain warning that this was not the time to explode in grief and rage. I kept my arms held tightly at my sides, my hands clenched into fists so tight I could feel the finger bones cracking with strain. Somehow, I forced myself to keep looking into Russell Fabray's stony countenance as I whispered the question I knew had to be asked even though I was dreading the answer.

"Are...are my parents dead, Mr. Fabray?"

He shifted in his seat. Something twisted in his face; he looked as though he were swallowing something bitter, something vile that he knew would make his guts churn. The Berry men looked at him, then at each other, then at me, concern and a strange kind of confusion animating their expressions. Hiram, the shorter Jewish half of the couple, adjusted the glasses perched on his nose like a tipsy bird, while Leroy, the taller African-American half, straightened his tie. It was clear that no one particularly wanted to answer me; each wanted to pass the buck to the other, but no one was willing to take on the terrible task of telling a young woman that her mother and father were gone forever.

" _Are my parents DEAD, Mr. Fabray?"_

Hiram Berry spoke up at last, his soft voice settling into the quiet that had been punctuated only by my heavy breathing. He ran a hand nervously through his dark hair, then put it into the pocket of his white lab coat. "Ah – well, Tina, that's just it. We...we don't know. They're...they're missing. That is to say, we don't know where they are. There's no trace of them anywhere in the building. There was an explosion, a release of incredible force, or...or at least what _sounded_ like one, but when we got to their work area, we couldn't find them."

I shook my head, unable to comprehend what Dr. Berry had just said. "Wait, wait – _what?_ I don't...I don't understand. What are you telling me? My parents have just... _vanished? Disappeared?_ How...how is that possible?"

"Sweetie, listen to me," Leroy interjected. "Your mom and dad – they were involved in very advanced, highly complicated research into quantum forces that only a handful of people on the planet besides them even begin to understand, energies that could one day completely reshape this entire world." He threw up his hands, groping in frustration for words with which he could hope to explain. "I know it's difficult for you to grasp this – it's hard for us too, believe it or not - but...as best as we can tell, something happened in that lab that's never, ever happened before."

I looked at him sharply, like he had just grown an eye in the middle of his forehead. It felt as though we'd all just stepped into an episode of my dad's favorite old TV show, _The Twilight Zone,_ where bizarre, inexplicable things happened randomly, for no reason at all.

"No, no, stop. Just tell me, please - are they alive or dead? That's...that's all I want to know."

Russell looked at his watch, clearly annoyed that this unpleasant situation had forced him to cancel his golf game or something. He shifted again, and the envelope he'd been holding dropped onto the coffee table.

"Apparently, most of your parents' research notes and other effects have disappeared along with them," he said. "This envelope contains everything that we were able to find in the lab, but even these two -" He gestured to the Berrys, who looked at me apologetically. " - haven't been able to make very much sense of it. They say it all looks as if it was written in another language."

"My parents were both fluent in several Chinese dialects, as well as Japanese."

"We know." He sighed, tapped his finger against the envelope sitting on the table. I followed the movement, tensing as though whatever was inside might explode. "And if these notes were in Chinese, Japanese or any other foreign language your mom and dad might have known, it would be a simple task for us to get them translated. But that's the thing – they're _not._ The only things we can read on them are your parents' names. Other than that, we haven't been able to identify any of the other writing on these pages."

"There's something else, too," Leroy added. "A piece of jewelry, a necklace or a bracelet of some kind, made of some kind of metal or other substance that we can't even begin to identify."

Hiram nodded. "It looks similar to silver, or gold, or bronze, but...the colors keep changing. Not only that, but its form...that keeps changing as well. Sometimes it looks like it's all one continuous piece, and other times it looks like a chain, like many tiny links forged together in a way we don't understand. And sometimes it's very thin, while at other times it's thicker, like a wrist or arm band." He gestured animatedly with his hands to illustrate. Obviously, he found the strangeness of the item wildly fascinating, but it was all confusing and headache inducing to me. His words all ran together as the shock and fatigue I'd experienced began to take their toll. I closed my eyes, let the cadence of his speech wash over me.

The scientist clearly didn't notice, continuing on from there: "And it's many, many times stronger than anything we've seen before, impervious to heat, pressure, you name it. Literally indestructible."

I ran a hand over my suddenly very tired eyes. "You took the time to determine this before you came over to inform me that my mom and dad have dropped off the face of the earth?"

Leroy had the decency to look embarrassed, and when he directed a very pointed glance at his husband, the shorter man coughed and said, "I'm sorry. We all deal with...stress...differently. Apparently, _I_ deal with it by talking far too much."

Smiling weakly, I replied, "Your daughter has the same problem." Since my parents and I had known them for years and Rachel was my best friend, I knew they'd take no offense at this slight jab. I was glad for the affection I felt from the two men, even numb and weary as I was, when the kind smiles they returned confirmed it.

At that point, Russell Fabray rose from my parents' expensive leather couch and smoothed the wrinkles from his even more expensive suit. Mom and Dad had always insisted that he was a good man - just not one with great social skills, despite his vast wealth. They hadn't known that I'd heard more about that lack of grace from Quinn than I cared to remember, poor girl.

"Yes, well," he rumbled. "I believe there's an investigation to continue, and other work to be done. Gentlemen, if you will?" He gestured to the door. "We'll show ourselves out. Don't worry, Ms. Cohen-Chang. We'll get to the bottom of this, I assure you. Believe me."

And just as they'd all managed to get themselves to the door, I heard a familiar voice cry out, and a small brunette missile launched itself first into the arms of Dr. Hiram Berry, and then into those of his husband.

"Dad! Daddy! I just got your message on my voice mail and rushed over here as soon as I could," Rachel exclaimed breathlessly. "My dance teacher _wasn't_ happy, of course, but I told her I just _couldn't_ stay another moment. What happened?"

When she saw the somber look on her fathers' faces, her gaze darted to me, and tears sprang to her large, round eyes as her hands flew up to her mouth. "Oh, no," she whispered. " _No._ "

"Stay with Tina, sweetheart," said Leroy, stroking his daughter's long, dark hair with a large, strong hand. "She's going to need you. She's going to need _all_ her friends, now more than ever."

As the front door quietly clicked shut and Rachel and I stood there crying in each other's arms, my breath coming in great heaving sobs, I didn't know just how true that was. And another thing I didn't know, but found out later?

Rachel wasn't the only one of my friends there.

Outside the house, Santana Lopez, who had been on her morning run and brought up short when she noticed the presence of two police squad cars and one very long, very conspicuous limousine, was at that very moment watching them all leave with intense curiosity, wondering just what the hell was going on. It was that curiosity, and her characteristic determination to find the truth no matter what, that would lead to the unbelievable events that would soon change everything for both of us.


End file.
